Hugh Dancy can simply do no wrong. After turning heads in 2009’s "Adam" and more recently on "The Big C" as a gay melanoma sufferer, Dancy (aka Mr. Claire Danes) has quickly risen to the top of the pack of sexy British imports. Here he returns to his proper roots, as it were, portraying a forward-thinking doctor who finds employment with a befuddled doctor (Jonathan Pryce) catering to women suffering from “hysteria”, a hazy term alluding to a far greater societal ailment of the time: the general inability to acknowledge women’s sexual vitality in the slightest.

He becomes acquainted with his boss’s polar opposite daughters - the prim Emily (Felicity Jones) and brash Charlotte (Maggie Gyllenhaal). And this is where HYSTERIA runs ever so slightly aground. Through no fault of Ms. Gyllenhaal’s, the script paints Charlotte a bit one-dimensionally, as a whirlwind precursor to suffragists whose every second word has to do with women’s rights or society’s ills. The writers here forget that nobody is ever that explicitly ahead-of-their-time, and as a consequence, the unlikely but obvious love story between the leads (not for lack of chemistry between Dancy and Gyllenhaal, two very game actors) never has time to develop correctly.

On the flipside, the film has a jovial supporting cast, with Bridget Jones’ mum Gemma Jones and notably Rupert Everett as a gadget-loving mad scientist of sorts who becomes instrumental in the vibrator’s, ahem, conception. His exceptionally hilarious banter, especially when yapping on the latest invention known as the telephone, could be likened to John Cleese.

HYSTERIA has fun showing period London’s brittle conventions as they crack and fall apart, and the film is based (in part) in the truth, but it is by no means hysterical. That word is reserved for the critically acclaimed play on the same subject, “In the Next Room”, or “The Vibrator Play”.



Tribecca Film Festival
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